


Stratagem

by narsus



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Movie(s), Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 03:19:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His duty is to control them, to force them into the roles that are required.  Just like he’s done to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stratagem

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Skyfall belongs to Eon Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and others. Based on James Bond by Ian Fleming.

The photos are incriminating at best; a complete breech of protocol at worst. Except, when he churns through the neatly ordered rolodex of memory, Mallory can’t be at all certain that there exists a protocol for this. There is no explicit order that fraternising is forbidden. Certainly, there is no real directive to avoid fraternising with three digit agents, except for the anticipated fallout. And a brief fumble in a storage closet with a, now dead, long buried, long forgotten 006, is hardly a black mark against his career. So there is, he reasons, no real breach of protocol. There are certainly no broken rules he could cite or string either of them up by. Besides, Bond is a good field agent, one of the best, and Q is of that school of thought that takes Machiavelli’s joke far too literally.

“No prince ever lacked for excuses to colour his bad faith.”

He recites the line with a sigh. It’s a bit early in the day but perhaps, somewhere in the far reaches of what remains of the Empire, the sun is over the yardarm which probably forgives a lot. The Talisker burns and he knows he’s drinking it far too quickly. But how else is he meant to respond? He’s just been presented with surveillance photographs of the finest of their field agents engaged in a tryst with the head of R & D. Another swallow of scotch and he steels himself to look down at the black and white photographs again. There’s no mistaking Bond, even with his wet hair plastered to his scalp, the map of scars and the bunching of muscle as he climbs out of the pool would be identification enough. Nor is it difficult to identify Q, dressed in pale shirt and trousers, glasses firmly in place, even as he reaches up and fiddles with a tangle of curls. And if there could be any confusion as to the reason for their assignation, the next photo, featuring both of them, dispels any pretence. Q in Bond’s arms, water soaking through his shirt as Bond’s wet body presses against his, not that he seems bothered by that, eyes closed, face tilted up, Bond’s mouth against his. Mallory hazards a glance through the rest of the pile. Snatches of bodies entwined on a bed, Bond gambling with someone else’s money, Q sitting at the bar in a tux. If it were anybody else Mallory might just write it off as a couple simply going on holiday together. He wishes it were that simple.

Putting the photos back into their unmarked envelope, he leans back in his chair and wonder what, if anything, this signifies. Bond doesn’t fraternise, not in the conventional sense, certainly, he isn’t adverse to sleeping with colleagues of either gender, but not outside of missions, or in that brief burst of adrenaline afterwards. He certainly doesn’t go on holiday with them. Not that Bond gets annual leave. He’s always on call but, in between missions, he’s relatively free to do as he pleases. And being Bond, what he normally does, is travel the world researching any and all environments he might be called to investigate next. Mallory isn’t honestly sure if that’s better or worse than the tale, from Cold War days, of the then head of section, when there weren’t three digits instead of names, who, when not in the field, simply lived at home quietly with his schoolteacher boyfriend. Perhaps, he supposes, each response was suitable for the era and Bond is eminently proactive in an era of unsettling change. Which all comes back to the fact that Bond doesn’t take holidays. The last time he went on extended leave was with the aim of quitting the service and marrying someone from the Treasury.

On the opposite side of the scale, Mallory winces at the judgemental sensation that bubbles over his reason for a split second, Q has been, in the past at least, somewhat liberal in his affairs. His university career filled with broken hearts and, often enough, broken men. Q is, if Mallory wants to put it in the most prejudiced of contexts, a tramp. Or at least he was. Having joined the service he seems to have given up on any kind of liaison entirely, occupied with his work, and disdainful of emotional entanglements. He’s turned down several offers of short and long-term arrangements. In fact, he’s become less responsive, on a human scale, to interaction of any kind since he’s become head of section. At least until Bond came along. Which may be the problem.

It could all be awkward and complicated and really, Mallory doesn’t, at all, want to deal with the fallout. It’s a situation that he’s going to have to watch, because he doesn’t want Bond to start trying _that_ pair of rose tinted glasses on again, any more than he wants Q to halt his steady drift into emotionless efficiency. He needs them both ruthless and efficient. He, the service, England itself, can’t afford for either of them to be compromised by softer feelings. They need to be monsters if they are to survive.

“A prince should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, kind, guileless, and devout, but his disposition should be such that, if he needs to be the opposite, he knows how.”

That’s the punch line. No amount of academic knowledge about the doings of a Florentine prince will help the fact that a world famous satire is the way that Mallory must live. He will spy on his own people, chart their utility to him and take whatever steps necessary to make sure that they still serve his purpose. Whatever it takes. Whether he has to have Bond shot off another train, into the abyss, or if he has to bend Q, struggling and protesting, over his desk. What England needs of him is cold efficiency and a ruthlessness that makes her enemies tremble. At least for the moment. He can’t escape the feeling that the wheels are already turning and that this is only the beginning of a greater plan that his predecessor set in motion.

**Author's Note:**

> Mallory is of course quoting Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.  
> Admittedly, Alec Trevelyan isn’t quite from the same continuity due to the franchise reboot.  
> The Cold War era reference is to the film version of Peter Guillam from Le Carré’s “Tinker Tailor Solider Spy”, based on the theory that the loosely aligned scalphunter section could easily have evolved into the 00s who answer directly to the head of the service in the modern era.


End file.
